Dusha Christmas Pics

Here are a couple of Christmas pics from the Dusha Christmas. I am not sure why (why is it Dusha's?!) that we don't gather as individual families or as a group to take a picture? We need to start that. Regardless here are two pics. I wanted to add a video of Teague reading, but I have tried for 3 days unsuccessfully to add a video, it keeps saying it can't connect to blogger or something, so hopefully it will add through You Tube or something. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

Uncle/Godfather Ryan with Megan opening his socks!

Teague opening his outfit from Auntie Grums

Merry Christmas to All!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was great, aside from Teague and I suffering with our colds and sinus infection. Gross. Anyway, it was a good time and Teague of course walked away with more stuff than he will ever know what to do with! He did seem to enjoy the present opening, but it was the ripping of the paper that was waaaay more exciting than what he received. We gave cousin Chase an Imaginex Jungle Castle - well once Chase grows out of that Teague will be very eager to have it. He loved that the most I think! Probably because it made animal sounds! So we spent Monday through Thursday morning with my family, Thursday afternoon at our house with the three of us opening presents, and then most of yesterday afternoon and evening with the Dusha's. Good food, good company and good times. Here are a few pics.

Bayer cousins and Teague

Teague very animately reading to Auntie and cousins
The Trio

Teague reading in his new bean bag chair from Tina

Just hanging out in his fav rain boots!"Enjoying" the bitter winter cold!

I am hoping to be on here a bit more now that some of the honeymoon phase of being on Facebook has diminished. It's interesting seeing where some long lost friends have wound up.

We have little planned for the rest of break. This weekend we are going to see our friends, the Krause's, and meet baby Parker. Next week Ryan has the Cathedral Holiday tournament, and then New Year's we will spend with the Van Beck's - it's nice and close to home so we can still bring Teague and get home shortly after midnight with little driving. Then back to the grind. I sure hope that the winter storms we have had are not an indicator of what is to come with this winter?!

May it warm up...someday.

Seriously? Will things get better now? Yesterday morning guess what? No heat again. So like a complete Clark Griswald I put on my flannel pj jammies, boots, ski mask, jacket and gloves and headed out to the furnace exhaust pipe. This time I didn't bring my hammer to LIGHTLY tap the pipe, instead I brought three extension cords along with my trusty hair dryer. So I plugged in the hair dryer and extension cords, climbed up on the ladder in my beautiful and fashionable get-up at 6:30 am and started thawing the furnace exhaust pipe. And if any of you are wondering where Ryan was while I was getting stuff running at home, I will give you one guess. C'mon, you must know - where would he be this time of year when things go wrong at home? Yep, morning basketball. Things are always choatic on basketball mornings - poor Ryan, I do feel bad for him because things do always go wrong when he isn't around! I then came inside to listen to my kid whine the whole while I got myself and him ready for daycare and work. Needless to say yesterday was not one of my more fashionable days at work. Yuck. Regardless, I felt so bad for my boy. Daycare called to report a sick toddler. Yep, had a 102 fever. He looked like he felt rough. So hopefully now that the heat works and the motrin has kicked in we are in for a good weekend and Christmas break! Here are some videos and pictures. Happy weekend!

Big boy with a bigger boy hat!

What up, homes?

Looking at the Christmas tree is always more fun with your rainboots on!

Playing with his animals - do you like his animal sounds??

Playing in the water.

When it snows, it blizzards????

Well I think the actual saying is "when it rains it pours", but this title seemed more fitting with the current weather conditions outside and inside at our house. Oye.

Thursday night and Friday morning we had lukewarm water, at best. So I trudged out to the propane tank to make sure there was propane, and there was plenty of propane (which I later found that by signing up for the "budget" plan like I did this past summer I locked in at $2.35 a gallon - and propane is now selling for $1.69, great "budget" plan). So off to work I went. When we returned home we went through all the trouble shooting in the user's manual for our 2 1/2 year old hot water heater and none were fixing the problem. So we retreated to using man's most reliable source of reference, the internet. So we googled our problem and find that another person has wrote a similar question on a chat forum. So the short answer to our problem was that we need to "sand" the flame sensor because it has build up on it. Yep, that took care of that. Great, let's get on with the weekend.

Saturday was fine and uneventful - well unless you ask Ryan whose newer cell phone died, Sunday we were trapped at home during the blizzard, and then Monday no school due to the blizzard. Tuesday morning we woke up and as we are getting ready for work we are freezing our tushies off! So neither of us paid attention to the lack of warmth and off to work we went. I came home at lunch to throw some dinner in the crock pot and noticed that it was especially cold in the house, didn't have time to investigate and just hoped it would be better when we got home. When we got home it was worse. It was only 60 degrees in the house and the furnace wasn't running. So with Ryan needing to get to his game and me needing to get to the swim meet to ref (and Teague with Grandma and Grandpa), we didn't have time to troubleshoot and use the handy internet. Time was of the essense, we were freezing! So I called the local plumbing and heating place since our fav plumber happens to live 65 miles away. Luckily we found out that the problem was not too hard to solve (the exhaust vent to the outside of the house had filled with snow and ice during the blizzard). So with that cleared out and all of us running in different directions we seem to have heat and warm water. Hallelujah!

So is everyone else keeping warm?!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...a toddler Christmas. This is the kind of face you get when attempting Christmas card pictures:


It's been fun doing a little shopping for Teague this year. Last year he was still too young to care about anything. At least this year he should care about the bows and wrapping paper. I did tell Ryan that we should take advantage of this age. He doesn't even know what he wants for Christmas, can't tell us what he wants, and wouldn't know any different if he didn't get anything! But of course we still went all out. Ah, whatever.


Nothing else is new here. We are just finishing up with school and counting down to break. Ryan is usually quite busy with the holiday tournament, but does have a few days off from practice, so we are excited to be able to see more of him. Teague and I did go to our first game. Keep in mind that the games start at 7:30 and Teague goes to bed at the same time. So tip off was at 7:30 and we left at about 7:32. Fun times.


Have a great weekend.

Hip Hip HOORAY!

Here is Teague doing his Hip Hip Hooray routine.  Please ignore his overly excited mother's voice.  How annoying!